'Return Ticket to Dublin Please'

by Colm Kelly, Ireland (PERG blog guest author)

From my experiences working in two major Financial Institutions, which are primarily involved in the funds industry, I have noticed a rapidly growing number of vacancies are being filled by Central European Immigrants. The majority of whom come from Poland with the remainder hailing from countries like Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. From my view point there are three main factors in the influx of CEE workers:

Firstly, financial companies based in Ireland are made up largely of American and Japanese firms which enter the European markets at the place of least barriers. Ireland provided least barriers to entry approx. 15 years ago through substantial tax breaks/incentives and a highly educated and young workforce. This highly educated workforce is now also highly paid and such companies now seek other opportunities to minimise costs and first on the list is to relocate. Relocate where though? China? Too far removed from their market place. Australasia? Already possesses a fully developed financial services industry and wages will provide a huge problem. So what about Central Europe? Relatively low wages. Good infrastructure. Close to the target market and also possesses a very highly skilled and educated workforce. So what is the best way to kick-start the transition? Attract the target CEE workforce to your current location, allowing them to receive the perfect on the job training while preparing the company for a move to CEE.

This leads to the method of attraction, the second reason. My current employers, the global market leader, selected a target demographic and advertised heavily in local and national newspapers and also targeted university graduates. By offering good wages and helping with accommodation costs they attracted a large group of Polish recruits which were brought over to the Irish office and settled into the working environment with ease, largely due to their excellent grasp on the English language and because of their strong work ethic.

What lead to their easy integration into the Irish workforce was the third reason. The governments ’open door’ policy allowed the importation of EU8 workers without any restrictions or limitations. It was quite literally a ’help yourselves’ policy. Whereas other immigrants, Nigerians for example, had to apply for visa’s and re-entry visa’s anytime they’d like to return home for a holiday, the CEE workforce were free to come and go as they pleased without restriction.

Other factors which helped promote the influx include, word of mouth, a 100,000 strong Polish community which has fully integrated into Irish everyday life and the opportunity for CEE immigrants to enjoy a high standard of living with many opportunities to discover other European cities through quick and easy local airlines. As more and more Polish workers arrived and integrated into Irish life, word would spread back home and would also filter through other countries such as Lithuania. About 3 years after the initial influx of Polish workers, other nationalities started arriving in greater numbers. I now work in a newly acquired company which is made up of 50% CEE workers, all hailing in equal numbers from all of the above named countries. From many conversations with these workers, they all have common reasons for migrating to Ireland. The opportunity to earn a higher wage and save enough to return to their home countries with a sufficient nest-egg. The lifestyle played a major part in their choice of destination with a solid CEE base community now living and working in Dublin, many immigrants find it easy to settle into life over here.

So what does this mean for us Irish? Well in the eyes of our employers we have now become a highly educated but also highly overpaid workforce. While I have seen no restriction in the progression of immigrants up the corporate ladder, most have not been here long enough to have climbed very far so now is the ideal time for these foreign companies to relocate as wage ‘cut backs‘ in high positions are now possible. By chance, my company just happened to be building a new European base in Poland over the last 3 years which has just recently opened and a large portion of the Irish based work and Polish workforce have been redeployed to Krakow. The global recession has also timed itself perfectly to allow such a company to justify the move to its Irish hosts, who are among the worst hit by the credit crisis and housing market collapse. This is routine business strategy for a global player though and it was our turn to play our part as grateful hosts for ten or so years and to now accept our fate. Now I believe CEE states will play the very same role as we did and hopefully they will last longer than we did.